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Archive for Constitutional Rights

Within hours of a madman opening fire in a crowded movie theater on Aurora, Colo., gun-control advocates began to use the theater shooting spree, which left 12 dead and 71 wounded, to push their agenda.

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, an ardent gun-control advocate, led the way, citing the massacre on a radio broadcast Friday morning, insisting that statements of sympathy and concern from President Barack Obama’s and Mitt Romney’s campaigns were not enough.

“Soothing words are nice,” said Bloomberg. “But maybe it’s time the two people who want to be president of the United States stand up and tell us what they’re going to do about it, because this is obviously a problem across the country. And everybody always says, ‘Isn’t it tragic?’”

Bloomberg urged the nation’s governors to speak out about the shooting as well.

“I mean, there are so many murders with guns every day. It’s just got to stop,” he said. “And instead of these two people, President Obama and Gov. Romney, talking in broad things about they want to make the world a better place. OK. Tell us how. And this is a problem.”

Bloomberg added: “No matter where you stand on the Second Amendment, no matter where you stand on guns, we have a right to hear from both of them, concretely, not just in generalities, specifically, ‘What are they going to do about guns?’”

The country seemed to be in for yet another round in the debate of whether gun-ownership creates violence or prevents it. Republican Rep. Louie Gohmert of Texas said he could not understand why there was apparently no-one in the theater with a weapon who could take gunman James Holmes out before he could create more mayhem.

“It does make me wonder, with all those people in the theater, was there nobody that was carrying a gun that could have stopped this guy more quickly?” Gohmert asked.

By Saturday much of the liberal media had weighed in with calls for more control. In an editorial, The Washington Post wrote, “There is no rational basis for allowing ordinary Americans to purchase assault rifles. They’re not necessary for hunting, and they’re not needed for self-defense.”

It added, “Yes, the Second Amendment protects a citizen’s right to own a gun, but it does not preclude reasonable regulation for public safety. Yes, mass killings occur in societies with stronger gun laws, but not with such regularity — and not against the backdrop of daily gun violence, both criminal and accidental, that distinguishes the United States.”

A top official with the National Rifle Association said Friday that President Obama will move to “destroy” gun rights and “erase” the Second Amendment if he is re-elected in November.

While delivering one of the liveliest and best-received speeches at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre said the president’s low-key approach to gun rights during his first term was “a “conspiracy to ensure re-election by lulling gun owners to sleep.”

“All that first term, lip service to gun owners is just part of a massive Obama conspiracy to deceive voters and hide his true intentions to destroy the Second Amendment during his second term,” he said.

“We see the president’s strategy crystal clear: Get re-elected and, with no more elections to worry about, get busy dismantling and destroying our firearms’ freedom, erase the Second Amendment from the Bill of Rights and excise it from the U.S. Constitution.”

“This ObamaCare rule still tramples on Americans’ First Amendment right to freedom of religion. It’s a fig leaf, not a compromise. Whether they are affiliated with a church or not, employers will still be forced to pay an insurance company for coverage that includes abortion-inducing drugs.”

“This is not just a problem for church-affiliated hospitals and charities. Under these rules, a small business owner with religious objections to abortion-inducing drugs and contraception must either violate his religious beliefs or violate the law.”

“The liberal Obama administration thinks its political goals trump the religious faith of American citizens. That isn’t right, fair, or constitutional.”

(CNSNews.com) – The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops issued a statement late on Friday declaring that the small alteration President Barack Obama had announced earlier in the day to a regulation that would force all health-care plans in the United States to cover sterilizations and all FDA-approved contraceptives–including those that cause abortion–is ‘unacceptable” because, among other things, it does not protect the freedom-of-conscience rights of secular for-profit employers, or secular non-profit employers, or religious insurers, or self-insured religious employers, or individual Americans.

The alteration President Obama described Friday says merely that insurance companies providing coverage to employees of religious institutions that object to sterilization, contraception or abortifacients will have to provide free coverage for these things to the employees rather than explicitly include them among the benefits covered by the premiums charged to the religious employer.

The regulation will still require individual Americans and private-sector employers to buy, and insurers to provide, insurance coverage that pays for sterilizations, contraception and abortifacients–even if doing so violates their religious beliefs.

In the end, Obama’s mandates come down to someone getting something for free at taxpayer expense.

The Obama administration’s refusal to grant religiously affiliated institutions a waiver from Obamacare provisions requiring that they provide employees with health insurance covering contraception, the “morning after” pill, and sterilization procedures is an unconstitutional assault on one of this nation’s most precious liberties.

But the debate over freedom of religion masks another critically important implication of the final rule approved by Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen `Sebelius.

That issue is found in the language used by defenders of the indefensible rule. From White House Press Secretary Jay Carney: “We are committed… to ensuring that women have access to contraception without paying any extra costs, no matter where they work.” Politico quotes a Democratic operative who says that it is extreme to “limit access to birth control because you work at a diocese-run nursing home.” And Senator Barbara (“Don’t call me Ma’am”) Boxer trying, as usual, to sound threatening: “We support the right of women in this country to have access to birth control through their insurance policies, and anybody who stands in the way is going to have to deal with us and our friends.”

Three separate far-left voices, one word repeated three times: “Access”

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled today that California’s Proposition 8 is unconstitutional, asserting that the voter-approved statewide initiative cannot limit the name “marriage” to heterosexual couples.

In a Feb. 7 news release, Liberty Counsel, “an international nonprofit litigation, education, and policy organization dedicated to advancing religious freedom, the sanctity of life, and the family since 1989,” states:

The ruling is very narrow and limited only to California…. Mathew Staver, founder of Liberty Counsel, commented: ‘The ruling is like kissing your sister. On the one hand, it is not the broad ruling sought by same-sex marriage advocates but, on the other hand, it also does not allow the people of California to limit the name ‘marriage’ to opposite-sex couples. If there is any good news that comes out of this opinion, it is that it’s limited to California and does not apply to the other 49 states and territories….

(CNSNews.com) – House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said that the regulation finalized last month by Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius that requires all health insurance plans to cover sterilizations and contraceptives (including those that induce abortions) “violates our Constitution” because it forces Catholic institiutions to act against the teachings of the Catholic church.

(CNSNews.com) – White House Press Secretary Jay Carney says there are no “constitutional rights issues” involved in a regulation issued by the administration that requires all health-care plans in the United States to cover sterilizations and all FDA-approved contraceptives, including those that induce abortions.

Because the Catholic Church holds that sterilization, artificial contraception and abortion are morally wrong and Catholic cannot be involved in them, the regulation in combination with the Obamacare mandate that all Americans buy health insurance will force American Catholics to choose between following the federal regulation or following the teachings of their church.

“I don’t believe there are any constitutional rights issues here,” Carney said when asked at today’s White House briefing about the regulation.